英文摘要 |
The mainstream medical community and the World Health Organization have defined obesity and overweight as an epidemic disease that presents a risk to health. The paper points out that the obesity and overweight is a social constructed disease rather than a pathological one. Contrary to the dominant discourse of science of fat and obesity epidemic, the article asks how the mainstream medical science constructs fat as an epidemical disease and fat people as the 'deviant' other. In recent years, scholars of the critical obesity research have given significant attentions to the issue of fat, they suggest that the obesity epidemic is much more than a natural phenomenon that described by science. Rather, the obesity science is a social idea, constructed within a complex of cultural 'tyranny of slenderness', gender ideal and scientific knowledge. This article suggests that obesity and overweight seen as an epidemic disease is scientific uncertain, which is influenced and constructed within the trend of (bio)medicalizaiton. BMI (Body Mass Index) as a tool of scientific measurement is not an objective index, rather, the establishment of BMI actually signifies a translative process between global and local medicalization of obesity science, which is correlated with global pharmaceutical interests. Furthermore, the BMI measurement can be said to construct the boundary of normal/deviant body with reference to idealized feminine body and masculine medical gaze within both popular culture and science. This article, one the one hand, analyzes the trend of (bio)medicalization of fat body after the 90s, on the other hand, examines gender representation and gender politics of fat people within medial discourse and popular culture. It is argued that fat woman's body is mainly related to hormone disorder, infertility, reproductive functions and the failure of motherhood; fat men's body has been related to sex organs and erectile dysfunction as the gender improper/deviant body. Thus, fat body is stigmatized within medical discourses through the naturalization of gender body and pathological body. |